Jenny's LiveJournal

Meetups

cesy — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:32:43 GMT

Firstly, Saturday 25th in the morning/early afternoon with special guest marina. Turn up any time after 10am - I'm an early riser. I have an OTW meeting at 3pm, but you're welcome to stay around during that.

Secondly, Saturday 8th Sept in the afternoon with special guest skud. Turn up any time from 2pm - I have another OTW meeting later on but will multi-task. I'm happy to organise dinner for a group if you want to stay later in the evening, just let me know.

I will get some sort of food/snacks in both cases, so a vague idea of numbers would be helpful. PM me if you don't yet have my address. Feel free to bring laptops/hard drives, vids to share, Youtube links, discussion topics, geeky ideas, Github issues to hack on, knitting, etc. Introverts are welcome to turn up and hide in a corner ignoring the chatter if you want.

This entry was originally posted at http://cesy.dreamwidth.org/487939.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Avengers vid rec

cesy — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:26:12 GMT

In The Bullpen by genusshrike is a great and cutting Natasha vid. And I liked the song enough that I just went out and bought the artist's album, after reading lyrics of a couple of other tracks on the internet, and I'm going to see the film for the second time on Wednesday, so this is a brilliant example of a vid that makes more money for both the musician and the visual source.

Natasha is awesome, and Dessa is pretty cool, too. She has a free EP on Bandcamp if you're interested.

This entry was originally posted at http://cesy.dreamwidth.org/480299.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Fannish/geeky tea party/meetup thing

cesy — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:49:29 GMT

The usual deal, if you want to spend a few hours chatting about the internet, eating cakes and watching vids, turn up at my place this coming Sunday, 2pm onwards. If you haven't been before, PM me for the address.

This entry was originally posted at http://cesy.dreamwidth.org/478838.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Fannish/geeky meet up

cesy — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:41:04 GMT

I'm hosting another tea party thing, 1st April - consider this your advance warning. At some point when I have brainpower spare, I will cross-post this to the relevant places, but it will be in the afternoon at my place as usual, and friends of friends/people drifting in from /network, etc. are all welcome.

This entry was originally posted at http://cesy.dreamwidth.org/476682.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

cesy — Fri, 20 May 2011 12:46:45 GMT

Apparently there is a sci-fi exhibition on at the British Library at the moment. A couple of friends and I are going tomorrow - is anyone interested in joining us?

This entry was originally posted at http://cesy.dreamwidth.org/451246.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Meetup reminder

cesy — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 09:01:25 GMT

Geeky/fannish meetup, my place, 27th March (i.e. this Sunday), 3-5pm or so. PM me for directions if needed.

Please comment if you're planning on coming so I know how many to cater for.

This entry was originally posted at http://cesy.dreamwidth.org/446174.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

LJ fail

cesy — Sun, 09 May 2010 06:15:16 GMT

I haven't commented much on all the recent LJ fail - it doesn't affect me so much any more, and you've mostly made your own minds up. However, this recent privacy mess-up is really skeevy.

Filters and stuff

cesy — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:58:38 GMT

Okay, I am now pretty much moved over to Dreamwidth in the sense that that's where I post first. I still check my flist here regularly, and I will try to cross-post as much as I can. To that end, I am going to reorganise my filters. This may mean that you can no longer see an entry you used to be able to see. If that happens and you would like to see something, just drop a comment here with the URL and I'll fix it.

Invite codes

cesy — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:28:37 GMT

I have a couple of spare Dreamwidth invite codes. Does anyone want one?

I also have one code which I sent to someone but they haven't used, and I don't know who it is. If that was you, please can you tell me if you still need it?

Dreamwidth invite codes

cesy — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:03:17 GMT

Is anyone in need of a code?

UK Space Conference part 10

cesy — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:35:07 GMT

Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html

As well as all my notes, David Smith of Cambridge University Spaceflight also made some notes, shown here:

50 Years as a Space Scientist, by which I mean “X-ray Astronomer”
Ken Pounds

USA and UK preparing for space studies even before Sputnik
UK rocket launch site at Woomera, Australia
Skylark project, a 35ft rocket – initially to ~100km, later expanded. World class for ~10yrs, later became economically unviable
Oct 4 1957 – Sputnik puts space in public consciousness to an unprecedented degree. Leads to formation following year of NASA
First UK satellite – Ariel 1, 1962. Launched on US Delta rocket. Radiation detectors destroyed by USAF nuclear tests
Also 1962 – first extra-terrestrial X-ray source found (ie not the Sun).
~20 known by 1970. Field of X-ray Astronomy now established
1970 – moves into orbit. Launch costs and brevity of data began to outweigh the speed of return on rocket data. NASA launches UHURU, finding hundreds of X-ray sources. UK equivalent, Ariel 5, launched 1974.
Rapidity of data return (~24h) allowed response to interesting things as they happened eg flare-up of A0620-00, the unseen companion of a known binary star. Discovered to be too massive for a neutron star – first strong candidate for a black hole of stellar origin. Star losing material to a black hole; material heats up through gravity to the point of emitting in the X range.
1983 – ESA emerges with EXOSAT, Japan 1987, Germany 1990, Italy/Netherlands 1996. The first three of these were strongly reliant on UK astronomers – advising/collaborating after UK national programme disappeared. All this filled a relative gap in NASA activity between 1980 and 2000.
German ROSAT detected 120k X-ray sources
Today: NASA's Chandra, ESA's XMM-Newton and Japan's ASTRO-E2. More sensitive than Skylark by a factor of ~100k
“Active” galaxies – those believed to harbour supermassive black hole at centre. Possibly all galaxies. Stellar black holes, by contrast, are now well established - ~20 known.

Prizes and the Entrepreneurial Space Community
Will Pomerantz

Emerging community
Ansari X Prize inspired by Orteig Prize for first non-stop flight across Atlantic, won in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh. Before this he was a complete unknown
9 teams spent ~16x the prize value between them on competing. Resulted in colossal increase in civil aviation.
Also DARPA challenges, Feynman Nanotech Prize.
Ansari X Prize for: Privately funded spacecraft going to 100km carrying 3 people repeatedly. 26 teams from 7 countries have entered, spending $100m+. Prize itself: $10m. Won by SpaceShipOne in 2004. Results: Technological advances; regulatory reform; legitimisation/popularisation of the industry, esp. the teams competing; creation of heroes/celebrities. Partial regaining of sense of adulation from early days of Space Race.
Other X Prizes: Archon for Genomics, Progressive Automotive for gene sequencing and efficient cars respectively. ~60 entries for the latter already, in space of ~1wk
Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge – funded by NASA. $2m for lunar orbit-to-surface vehicles using VTOL. Aimed at building marketplace and skills up for eventual return to Moon for free (from NASA's POV)
Pixel vehicle built by Armadillo ?Aerospace designed and built in ~6m
Orders of magnitude faster, cheaper and better than the nearest government competitors
Google Lunar X Prize. $20m prize for a Lunar rover returning HD data on >500m of surface. Eventual result: Cheap ($20m a go) access to Moon for universities etc.
Madsen
Frednet

James Webb Telescope/MIRI

Named for the man who moved NASA into Astrophysics as distinct from merely exploration.
D=6.5m primary mirror, IR optimised, therefore cooled to ~40ºK
Orbiting at Lagrange L2 – Earth is between L2 and the Sun => dark skies
Launching Jun 2013 on an Ariane-5; 5-10 year lifetime. Location means it can't be serviced during the mission like Hubble
Unique challenges arising from sheer size; launched folded up to overcome this
Hexagonal mirror composed of individually manoeuvrable segments
IR used to see v. distant galaxies, whose light is red-shifted from UV into IR spectrum; also to see into dusty planetary and stellar nebulae
Designed to carry a broader range of instruments than Hubble – not just visible-range. Spectrometers etc.
MIRI (Mid-IR Imaging) telescope system incorporated into James Webb: 5,000x better and faster than Hubble. 10,000x faster than anything else in the mid-IR. Requires ~7ºK; distributed across whole telescope. Carbon fibre used for thermal insulation
Result of European partnership, led by UK. Also significant input from JPL.
Aims: To find the very first stars and galaxies – observational data for theories of early galaxy formation (Hierarchical Galaxy Formation) Use of IR adds additional data points to existing views of v. early/distant (pop. III?) galaxies – because they are free of dust, it won't be able to see them, which will be significant. Similarly, it will be able to see extremely dusty galaxies that are invisible to Hubble.
To investigate planet formation by finding more familiar-looking stellar systems. Those currently known have Jovian planets closer to the star than our own. Also analysing stellar debris disks
Similarly, to perform spectroscopies on Kuiper Belt Objects in order to learn more about early history of Solar System
To study asteroid-belt comets, which are believed to have been the source of Earth's water.

Earthquake Prediction from Space

Disaster Monitoring Constellation – network or “constellation” of microsatellites covering whole surface of Earth.
Already been used to help coordinate disaster relief, eg Hurricane Katrina, Portugal forest fires, Boxing Day Tsunami. Allows broad overview of affected areas.
Aim is to provide some degree of mitigation via advance warning.
Possible methods for this: movements in crust detected, via interferometric radar (although it is much harder to see these effects before the event);
Theoretical understanding of rocks suggests that when placed under extreme pressure they act as an electrical cell; +ve charges migrate towards surface. IR emissions result at the surface from something complicated involving semiconductivity 1999 earthquake at Hector Mine, California, US appears to support this, as does the 2003 earthquake at Bam, Iran, but the accuracy of correlation is uncertain.
Non-seismic signals also under investigation – changes in ionosphere due to the aforementioned charges; this is detectable via its impact on low-frequency radio signals.
French satellite Demeter provides ionospheric evidence for EM emissions in the 0-10kHz range shortly before and after earthquakes
“Earthquake lights”. Electrical phenomenon. Rare and short-lived, so utility as a mechanism of prediction is limited.
Suggestions even exist of a correlation with lightning strike frequency due to the charged-crust idea; link with newly-discovered forms of lightning ie “elves” and “sprites”
Possible earthquake detection satellite would be equipped with inflatable low-freq radio antennas; also instruments to monitor electron content of ionosphere and to detect the IR signature
Problems: >20 satellites required for the “constellation”, in low (~500km) orbits to minimise noise => propulsion needed to counter drag
On-board processing potentially needed for communication with ground stations; also links between satellites via iridium mobile phones. Also memory in order for satellite itself to process data and analyse it for significance before notifying its ground station. Next-generation processors are projected to have 10x processing power and use 1/10 power of today's.
Also unlikely to work for undersea earthquakes => tsunamis
Lifespan of 5-7yrs enables updating of technology at similar rate to field of computing

British Interplanetary Society – Reaction Engines

Propulsion research
SABRE: hybrid engine (airbreathing/rocket) for reusable SSTO vehicle
Vehicle under development: Skylon
Researching materials for use in re-entry
Airbreating engine: uses fast air intake, once cooled, to drive a compressor which then feeds compressed air into the engine proper. Allows v. high H2 efficiency.
Research into cooling mechanisms, precooled engines.
Applications for A2 Mach-5 aeroplane
Scimitar engine – precooled like SABRE
Other applications: Mars mission (Troy) sketched out and applicability of Skylon to it considered
Problems with orbital assembly: varying speeds of orbits (ie objects do not stay side by side), debris, shadowed sector of orbit. Conclusion: entire orbital dockyard needed.

OU PSSRI

Has contributed parts to Giotto, Cassini Huygens, Beagle 2, ExoMars, MoonLite and others.
Mass spectrometry
Specialises in returning/analysing samples
Tandem Mission – balloon-based to Titan/Enceladus

OU Caves on Mars

Shielded from UV, temp. variations; far larger living area than most proposals for surface bases.
Similarly, strong candidates for extant or past life
Terrestrial caving indicates that medium-term cave survival is achievable
Also ropes can be about half as thick due to lower gravity
Closest terrestrial analogue is lava tubes on Tenerife
Journey to Mars takes ~8months; by this point the relative positions of Earth and Mars require a wait of ~2yrs before you can get back. Alternative trajectory allows you to return straight from Mars if something goes wrong but involves a longer time spent in space.

OU ESMO

Student-led Moon orbiter
ESA backing
Costs a fraction of those of comparable missions
Sections: Avionics, Energetics, Payload, Platform, Ground
UK teams: OU (Payload), Glasgow (M. Analysis), Southampton (Structures & Config), Warwick (Electronics)

UK Space Conference part 9

cesy — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:23:45 GMT

Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html

The eleventh talk I went to was the big one at the end.

The first bit was by Jerry Bolter of EADS Astrium. He talked about the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. It's easier to get to Pluto than to Mercury. Only 40% of the surface has been mapped. The mission will test some bits of Einstein's theory of General Relativity. The Messenger mission to Mercury was launched in August 2004, and will reach orbit around Mercury in March 2011. BepiColombo will be launched in 2013 on a Soyuz Frégat. It will have 2 orbiters - a Japanese MMO to map the magnetosphere and the ESA MPO to study the planet more closely. The bits of the orbit are called periherm and apiherm instead of perigee and apogee. MPO has 13 instruments. MMO is spin stabilised with 26 revolutions/minute. The route will start with going into Earth orbit, raising the apogee gradually to the Moon, then a gravity assist from the moon. It orbits the Sun 12 times before getting to Mercury. The transfer time is 6 years. There are major issues with heating - heat shield on one side so the spacecraft doesn't overheat. MMO has to be kept in the shade.

The second bit was by David Southwood of ESA. He says he's a physicist but he doesn't like pure research. He attempted to justify his job. As Director of Science, he says he likes science. He mentioned missions currently flying: Hubble, Integral, XMM-Newton, Rosetta. He compared them to their American equivalents: Chandra just does images, whereas Newton does spectroscopy, which is better. Deep Impact is much more violent than Rosetta. He made a bad joke about Mme Sarkozy. Other missions flying now are SOHO, Cluster and Ulysses. He made a bad joke about Reagan. Ulysses communicates through NASA's Deep Space Network. He was at uni at Imperial. Mars Express was launched in 1996. Something to do with it failed, but it's still on his "flying now" list. Cassini-Huygens is still flying, and has been extended to 2017. Double Star is still flying. He's a bit keen on bad jokes that he appears to think are cutting, sarcastic and funny. Other things flying now: Venus Express, Akari, Hinode, Cordt. He blames politics for the delays on ExoMars. Lots of LISA bits are being built in Stevenage. He's proud of lots of things. Dave thinks he looks like Einstein.

The third bit was by Martin Sweeting, who is made of awesome. He is the founder of Surrey Satellite, and is local. (As in, he lives down the same road as my friend Kim. How cool is that?) He uses screen beans, insects, turtles and dinosaurs to illustrate that small is good. Small satellites are small in mass, time, cost and utility. You get more computing power than many big satellites do. They had £30 million revenues in 2007. He accidentally said something was "rather unique", but he pronounced "router" correctly, so we forgave him. SSTL specialise in 6 to 600kg, less than 2 years development, between £5 million and £25 million. They started launching in 1981. They have a 93% mission success. They've used 9 different launchers, including Delta, Ariane, TSkylon, Zenit, Dnepr, Atlas, Athena and some old converted Russian nuclear missiles. This is quite useful when the Russians need to decommission an old nuclear weapon - they take the warhead and then SSTL can use the launcher to launch a satellite. Their ground station looks after 14 satellites, but they're mostly autonomous - the computer just texts someone if there's a problem. They test how various COTS devices work in LEO. Previous satellites took 2 weeks to image a particular area. DMC takes 1 day. This is awesome.

Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/176569.html

UK Space Conference part 8

cesy — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 08:35:45 GMT

Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html

The tenth talk I went to was the discussion on UK Space Policy. It started with all the panellists introducing themselves.
Ian Gibson, Director of Technology in BNSC, talked about collaboration. He wanted to highlight 5 important points: we are a leader in understanding climate change using satellites, we are a partner in global exploration, it's an important industry (25,000 jobs, £4.6 billion), it produces innovation, and it inspires STEM, which then has an impact on society.
Martin Barstow, Head of Physics and Astronomy at Leicester University, talked about the STFC funding cuts. The STFC budget is £600 million a year, and they've had £80 million cut over 3 years. He's keen on human space flight, but wants to emphasise that we need new money for it - don't cut more. Money matters!
Francis Brown, editor of Space Policy magazine, finds it difficult to get articles from the UK. She says we need more outreach and publicity (and collaboration).
Ian Gibson reminded us that the US space budget is $36 billion, which is 60 times the UK spend.
Pat Collins of the Royal Aeronautical Society mentioned the 4 new ESA astronauts, the importance of surveillance satellites, and the politics of anti-satellite weapons.
Alison Gibbings, vice-chair of UK-SEDS, said that human space flight is inspiring, but needs to be done alongside robotic stuff.
David Southwood, Director of Science at ESA, said that the UK aren't good at discussing space policy. ESA spend £3 billion a year. We need to plan top-down, not bottom-up.
The discussion was then opened to questions from the floor.
Someone said a GP had suggested osteoporosis research on the ISS. The NHS are interested in medicine in space. They have £4 billion a year for research.
Martin Barstow said we need a space agency with a budget.
David Southwood waffled in a management-speak bureaucrat kind of way.
Pat Collins said we don't need to spend anything because... and I didn't understand the reason because it was buried in waffle.
Anu Ojha asked what if a British astronaut wins the astronaut thing. Would ESA try to blackmail the UK into giving more money?
David Southwood: Yes.
He said the UK government don't have 1 space policy, we have 17. (He didn't elaborate, so I'm not sure how this works except as a witty soundbite.)
He told us that ESA are not racist because they have lots of UK employees.
Ian Gibson patronised Alison, and asked the little girl if she wanted to be an astronaut when she grew up.
Alison said yes, she would apply to be an astronaut.
Ian said it would be awesome if we won all 4 places.
Martin Barstow indulged in some mild waffle.
Jeremy someone said he understood that if we won, the French and Germans would be kind of peeved that we hadn't paid.
Ian and David waffled about the EU, carefully avoiding such controversial topics as the constitution/mega-state and monopolies.
David indulged in lots more waffle.
A girl in the audience said many kids don't know ESA exists. What do BNSC propose to do about it? We're working on outreach and they're not supporting it.
Ian said BNSC do stuff. 60% of the population have heard of ESA.
Martin said yeah, kids haven't heard. ESA aren't as good at PR as NASA, but they're trying to improve.
David said no-one's heard of USAF Samsung, we rely on GPS but we don't care what they're called. So it doesn't matter if kids haven't heard of Galileo. He very nearly accidentally said that ESA don't do anything worth publicising. He avoided talking about the fact that although we haven't heard of USAF Samsung, we have heard of satnav.
Some guy asked if missions should be selected purely on the basis of science.
Pat said science missions should be selected purely on the basis of science. Military or telecoms stuff should be selected on the basis of their usefulness to the military or telecoms. Inspiring happens automatically, apparently, so we don't need to consider that.
Martin said UKSC should be at another time of year (it's currently clashing with lots of stuff, like the National Astronomy Meeting, the Space Generation Advisory Council European Congress, and various other conferences). The conference also needs more academic stuff as well as education.
A girl asked the classic question of how we justify space stuff to Joe Public. Pat listed satellite TV, GPS, climate predictions and weather forecasts. Martin talked about skills - clever science graduates become bankers and entrepreneurs. They mostly started out wanting to be astronauts. Alison echoed Martin, but with a bit less skill in public speaking.

Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/176143.html

UK Space Conference part 7

cesy — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:06:22 GMT

Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html

The ninth talk was by various young professionals in the industry. They gave us helpful advice to do summer internships and extra-curricular stuff. I wondered why someone from BAE was included when she wasn't talking about space stuff, and it's not even as if they're listed as sponsors of the conference. Cranfield University is near Milton Keynes and does Master programmes in space engineering. Apparently Kent Uni also do some space-related stuff. DMC is disaster monitoring constellation. Someone mentioned a starting salary between £20k and £25k, and after 4 years pay rise to between £25k and £30k. SSTL have 250 staff, sites at UniS, the Research Park and Kent. They have built 27 satellites, with a total of 200 years in orbit. AIT stands for assembly, integration and test (in clean rooms). They mentioned the "UK Space Strategy 2008-12" document. If the ATV (Jules Verne) works, ESA will recruit 4 new astronauts. They used to have 16, and now have 6. Space Adventures cost £15 million to get into orbit, potentially £60 million to get to the moon. For astronaut selection, they want you to be doing your second degree-thing - i.e. on your Masters or PhD. Good subjects are engineering, medicine and geology. SCUBA diving or piloting experience are also useful.

David Clark then gave a talk. He is head of sales at Virgin Galactic. They've had nearly 300 sales so far - the whole of the first year is booked. WK2 should be finished in July. They've had 100 new customers since January. Brian Binnie was test pilot for SS1. He showed us some cool videos.

Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/176020.html

UK Space Conference part 6

cesy — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:16:58 GMT

Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html

The eighth talk I went to was the Open University session.

Andrew Ball told us about Rosetta and Ptolemy comet missions. The OU is involved in Huygens, Beagle 2, ExoMars and MoonLITE. There is more info on http://cepsar.open.ac.uk

Vic Pearson told us about sample return, classifying meteorites, and mass spectrometry - they're good at oxygen analysis. She discussed the possibility of microbes surviving in space.

Andy Morse told us about medical applications of tiny mass spectrometers. Tandem is a mission going to Saturn, Titan and Enceladus, where it will send a balloon down. He then talked about caving on Mars. The most common type of cave on Earth is limestone, which is unlikely on Mars, given that it requires certain types of life. The most likely type of cave on Mars is a lava tube. These are fairly rare on Earth. They form when lava cools to form the outside of a tube but the lava inside carries on flowing away. Caving requires stamina more than brute strength, so not necessarily the same people as might be chosen for other types of missions. Good cavers can still look fat. On Earth, you'd need a 1cm diameter rope. On Mars, the lower gravity means you'd only need 5mm. He showed us a plan for a trip taking 200 days to travel from Earth to Mars, 480 days there and then return. 1.5 years in space means radiation problems. There's also the possible "free return trajectory" - 160 days to get there, with a free return if you need to abort landing (2 years to return).

Steve Bartlett told us about the European Student Moon Orbiter. It is organised by SSETI (different from SETI) who sent Express into LEO in 2005. They also plan the European Student Earth Orbiter in 2011. There are 4 UK teams - OU (Payload), Glasgow (Analysis), Southampton (Structure) and Warwick (Electronics, I think). They discuss stuff over IRC every week, and use newsgroups. COTS stands for commercial off-the-shelf [Thanks, I'd been wondering about that for a while]. 96 day transfer, 10 month mission. Launch sometime 2011-2013. There also exists ASMO, supported by NASA.

Steve Otter told us that the deadline to sign up for ESMO has passed, so it's too late to get involved unless you're from one of those unis. He also told us that the RAS sponsored it. I expect he said some other stuff, too, but I don't appear to have written it down.

Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/175754.html

UK Space Conference part 5

cesy — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:48:33 GMT

Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html

The sixth talk was the British Interplanetary Society session. I went to their talk on Spaceplanes by Alan Bond, then moved half-way through to George Abbey's talk next door.
Alan Bond told us about propulsion research at Reaction Engines (a small company). They are building the Sabre engine, designed to be used in the reusable launch vehicle Skylon. They use a glass ceramic shell for reentry. They had a stand at the last Farnborough Air Show, and are based on a site in Oxfordshire. They have plan for the "Troy" Mars mission in 2028, assembled in orbit.
George Abbey was at NASA. He told us that Apollo took a grand total of 8 years from JFK's announcement to their first landing. You need to keep the Shuttle running to take full advantage of the ISS. Restrictions on exports (ITAR) are a big challenge for international cooperation, and the lack of science and engineering graduates is also a problem. NASA needs a more balance programme - they've lost the aeronautics, robotic and environmental stuff they used to do, and are too focused on manned missions to the Moon and Mars. They need a better propulsion system, and they need to invest in universities. China have collaborated with ESA and Russia and are interested in joining the ISS programme, but NASA aren't keen to let them in. Under the current immigration rules, Einstein would not have been able to enter the US.

The seventh talk was the Leicester University session.
The first speaker was Jonathan Tedds, who told us about AstroGrid. This is a project to put astronomical data online in a standard format. Nowadays we get about 20 TB/year of data. When VISTA (a new telescope) starts running later this year, we'll get 100 TB/year. By 2015, there'll be about 5 PB/year, once the LSST and others have been opened. This is a lot of data! The IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alliance) have set up standards for database formats and query formats. AstroGrid is about to be launched (it's currently in beta). You can download a Java front-end (so it works on Windows, Mac or Linux) or access the data using Python. See www.astrogrid.org for more information.
Julian Osborne told us about the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer. Gamma-ray bursts were first seen in 1969, and last a couple of seconds on average. In 1997 they first saw the x-ray afterglow, which lasts about a day. It was a very interesting talk, on the different types of bursts (short and long) and their causes (neutron stars colliding, neutron star colliding with black hole, black holes colliding). Swift has an instrument to spot bursts and then it turns very quickly to spot the afterglow with the rest of its instruments.
David Boyce is a PhD student at Leicester. He told us about the UltraViolet astronomy he does. UV is classified into Near UV (0.3 micrometres), Far UV and Extreme UV (30 nm). The aurorae of Earth, Saturn and Jupiter are surprisingly visible in UV. He told us lots more interesting stuff, but it appears I failed to write it down.

Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/175324.html

UK Space Conference part 4

cesy — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:41:28 GMT

Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html

The fourth talk was by Joe Engle, a NASA astronaut and test pilot. He talked about the X-15, precursor to the Space Shuttle, which broke several speed records (Mach 4, Mach 5, etc.). It would be dropped from a B-52, fire the rocket and then glide back to land. He showed us lots of photos and videos and told us about the flights that worked and the few disasters. It was surprising how many crash-landings resulted in the pilot coming out unscathed, or at least recovering to fly again, and the aircraft were rebuilt and mended.
The next bit of the talk was by Nigel Henbest, who gave us a whirlwind tour of the history of astronomy, from Stonehenge, Babylon and the ancient cultures of Latin America, right through Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Copernicus and so on up to the present day.
I was too busy listening to take proper notes for either of these. They had some very good photos.

The fifth talk was on Black Knight. Due to technical issues, a friend of the speaker (Roy someone? I couldn't catch his name) stood up to talk about his involvement first. Black Knight was a UK rocket programme, run on a low budget of less than £2 million a year. Their largest motor was the Rook, with a 17 inch diameter. This was a solid fuel motor. The de-energised version, Raven, was used for the Skylark sounding rocket. The Rook was larger than any previous motor, and needed bigger buckets to make large enough quantities of propellant! Eventually they changed to liquid propellant. They looked at "acquired" V2 documentation for ideas and information. BK03 was single stage. Eventually they changed to 2-stage. In earlier versions, they had speeds of 12,000 feet/second. The heat-resistant coating they used, called Durestos, was cheap and nasty and had asbestos in. You're not allowed to make it nowadays. When watching a flight, you could see the blue streak of re-entry in the sky before you hear the sonic boom. They were heading towards 17,000 feet/second when the Blue Streak programme was cancelled by the government.
Nick Hill then stood up to speak, having fixed the projector. He told us that Black Knight launched from Woomera, Australia, with a Cuckoo motor, which was the Rook with half of it chopped off. They then used liquid propellant, hydrogen peroxide (called HTP in rocketry) with a silver-plated nickel gauze as catalyst, and kerosene. This fuel is very dense compared to others, so the fuel tank was small. There's a risk of suck-back at altitude, so they had spring-loaded flaps to prevent it. BK02 never flew. BK03 picked up a stray radio signal and misinterpreted it as a self-destruct command. BK04 worked well. As well as the site at Woomera, they had a site near Cowes on the Isle of Wight, called the High Down site, within sight of the Needles. Black Knight used 4 Gamma motors. The Gamma 301 had higher thrust and a better mixture than the 201 (24,000 pounds thrust). The Cuckoo motor has a 6-pointed star shaped hole in the centre, which means it burns from the inside out rather than bottom up the way most solid motors do, so the burning area stayed constant. BK08 was the first two-stage version: first stage liquid, second stage Cuckoo. For rocketry it's important to have the centre of gravity in front of the centre of pressure. One rocket went wrong, hit the ground at Mach 3 and went in 13 feet. They had to keep it quiet so the Australians didn't come along and try to dig it up. The rocket had a 36 inch diameter. They planned to move to a 54 inch version, but then the funding was cut off.
Black Knight would have made a good second stage for Blue Streak as a satellite launcher. It would take up 1 tonne. It was planned a few months before Sputnik. The government gave them a couple of hundred thousand pounds for studies, but no more, so the Russians got there first. This method was called Black Prince. There was also a plan called Black Arrow to strap on boosters and launch satellites directly from the Black Knight.
There would be several challenges for any potential revival of the Black Knight programme: no infrastructure (all the companies building the parts have moved on); no 'know-how' - most of the knowledge has been lost as everyone who worked on it retires; no launch site - Woomera is no good any more, for some reason that wasn't explained, and the north of Scotland/Inverness would be possible but very difficult; no money - you'd need £40 million of so, and the Treasury has a long memory of Black Knight being expensive; no payload - modern satellites are too big to fit.
[It did occur to me to wonder whether SSTL's microsatellites would fit, but you'd still have the rest of the challenges.]
John Scott-Scott then spoke. In 1933, Walter were thinking of using HTP for submarine engines. They won the speed record for submarines in the 1940's using it. The technology came from Westcott. 'Cold' burning means no kerosene, just decomposing HTP. 'Cold' is still 5000 degrees. He showed us OHP slides of the Gamma motors with lots of technical detail. You can swivel the motors to steer so you don't actually need fins.

Next part: http://cesy.livejournal.com/174869.html

UK Space Conference part 3

cesy — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:06:36 GMT

Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html

The third talk started with Lembit Opik MP, who talked about Near Earth Objects and their actuarial risk, among other things. I missed most of it due to a programme mix-up.
The next part was a series of shorter talks from PhD students and others.

It started with Sarah Matthews of the UCL Mullard Space Sciences Lab (MSSL from here on because it's too long to type). She worked on Hinode, which was previously known as Solar-B because the Japanese only rename things after they've had a succesful launch. (Would this mean Beagle 2 still wouldn't have a name?) The mission is about understanding solar flares. More info at http://msslxr.mssl.ucl.ac.uk:8080/SolarB

Nick Achilleos is at the UCL Atmospheric Physics Lab/Centre for Planetary Sciences. It is a Principal Investigator Institute, whatever that means. He talked about the strong magnetic fields in Jupiter and Saturn. For Jupiter and Earth, true north differs from magnetic north by about 10 degrees. For Saturn, it's less than one degree. He also told us about how the solar wind affects the magnetosphere. It appears I was too interested to take down proper notes.

Rainer Winkler is involved with the National Physics Laboratory, and is a PhD student at MSSL. He does stuff to do with calibration of SI units. This is clearly important, but could sound boring if not presented extremely well.

Berend Winter does mechanical engineering at MSSL. He showed us some pretty photos of Hinode. Herschel will be launched later this year. It will sit in the L2 Lagrange Point behind the Earth. It will be very cold. There are cooling issues, with different parts being at 12K, 4K, 2K or 0.3K. That's quite cold. The pictures and info about the insulation was interesting.

Glyn Collinson then gave an awesome talk. He is a PhD student at MSSL, which is the Lead Scientific Institute for MoonLITE. The aim of MoonLITE is to land on the moon in 2013 or so. Lunar Prospector looked at the possibility of ice on the moon, and we want to know more. The moon doesn't have a liquid outer core like the Earth does, or at least we think it doesn't, but we have very little evidence, just a little bit of data from the instruments the Apollo missions left behind. They're all clustered on one side of the moon, so not much good for deducing underground structure. They're working with Imperial. The idea is to drop 4 kinetic penetrators from a polar orbiter - one at each pole, one on the far side and one near the Apollo sites. This means it still gives some data if one dies, but with all four you get a good picture. The military have been doing kinetic penetrators for years, so it's a proven technology. It will cost in the order of £100 million, but they haven't done the full study yet so that's a very rough figure. There's more info on www.glyncollinson.co.uk/space

UK Space Conference part 2

cesy — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:28:10 GMT

Part 1: http://cesy.livejournal.com/173972.html

The second talk I went to was by Prof Ken Pounds of Leicester University. He used to be the President of the Royal Astronomical Society. The Skylark sounding rocket was developed at RAE Farnborough. Ariel 1 was the first UK satellite, launched on a Delta rocket. Skylark was launched from Woomera, Australia. (Someone said later that there's some reason Woomera can't be used nowadays.)

Will Pomerantz of the X Prize Foundation was at Internation Space University before coming to the X Prize Foundation 3 years ago as Director of Space Projects. The X Prize was inspired by the Orteig Prize in 1927, where 9 teams spent 16 times the prize value. He gave us a brief history of other similar prizes and their successes. The X Prize had 26 teams, $10 million prize, over $100 million spent by the teams in 7 countries. SpaceShipOne was launched in 2004. Armadillo have done some good work towards the Google Lunar X Prize - 6 months from a scribble on a napkin to flying their lunar lander, and they did that twice, with two different designs, after their first design didn't win. An interesting bit of trivia - the US flag on the Moon was UV-sensitive, so is now just white. There's a team summit for the GLXP in Strasbourg, France on May 19-21, with a student competition on May 19th. The student competition involves teams turning up and being given a design challenge, and they have to produce a business and technical proposal to present at the end of the day. He mentioned the FredNet team, who are aiming to win the prize using an open-source method.

UK Space Conference

cesy — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:29:04 GMT

I've just come back from the UK Space Conference (www.spaceconference.org.uk) where I met lots of rocket scientists. It was awesome. I will be writing up all my notes from the talks shortly. If any of the speakers read this, Duncan Law-Green says PowerPoint slides can be put on the website, so do send them to him.

Introduction:
For those who don't know, the conference used to be the British Rocketry Oral History Programme and has now been expanded to include current space research and an education section as well as the history stuff. There were stands from various companies and organisations in the exhibition hall, and there was a careers fair on the student day.

Cambridge bit:
Dave (my boyfriend, also on the Cambridge University Spaceflight team) spoke briefly to David Wright, who organises the conference, and there's a chance we might be presenting next year. There was a Leicester Uni session and an Open University session - it would be great if enough people from the IoA were interested that we could have a Cambridge session next year.

Talk 1:
The first talk I went to was by Steve Owens, UK co-coordinator for the International Year of Astronomy 2009. It's the anniversary of Galileo's discoveries in 1609 and the Moon landing in 1969. There was a mention of the Galileoscope $1 telescopes they're hoping to produce to encourage kids to learn about astronomy, and the website is www.astronomy2009.co.uk.

The second half of the talk was by David Williams, Director General of the British National Space Centre. I learnt how to pronounce the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. (Dee-uss, not diy-uss.) He talked about how much of our day-to-day life relies on satellites - not just satnav, but TV and broadband and weather forecasts. His powerpoint presentation needed proofreading - we muttered about the missing apostrophes and other typos and American spellings. He mentioned the National Space Centre in Leicester, and the International Astronautical Congress in Glasgow, Sep 29-0ct 3 this year, which is organised by the British Interplanetary Society. He talked about both the ESA projects that the UK is involved in and bilateral projects we're doing. Mars Express was launched in 2003. The main thing in the Aurora Programme is ExoMars. ESA are putting out an astronaut call this year. (I later learnt that this will be within a few weeks; they are recruiting 4 more astronauts to join their team of 6. Selection is from any ESA country, including the UK, and takes ages. They want you to be doing or have done a Masters or PhD, and piloting or SCUBA diving skills help, as does physical fitness.) The spectrometer that was designed for Beagle 2 is now used as a TB detector in Africa - space technology has wide-ranging applications. Satellites can help in disaster relief, with weather forecasting and spotting areas that have been devastated after a natural disaster.

The last bit of the first talk was by Anu Ojha, who works at Space Academy in Leicester. He is the Education Director for the NSC (Space Academy is the education outreach bit of the NSC). He started off with a Simpsons clip of space. To get kids and teachers interested, linking space to climate change and the curriculum is pretty effective. They do both academic and vocational stuff. He gave various examples of how learning about space can be used to teach parts of the National Curriculum as well. He's a good speaker, and seems like a businessman more than a geek, though I think it later emerged that he is a part-time physics teacher. Space School UK is a summer school in Leicester for secondary school pupils to learn about space. They have 25 places. There's also an ESA summer school in Norway, and they've just funded 15 UK places for that.

Part 2: http://cesy.livejournal.com/174263.html

Blue scarf pattern

cesy — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:06:26 GMT

Of course, you can make this in any colour.

Use DK yarn on 4mm needles.
Cast on 30 stitches.
Garter stitch.
Carry on until you run out of wool - a 100g ball is about right for a sensible length of scarf.

Knitting pattern

cesy — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:00:10 GMT

It's been a while since I've posted on here.

I've just joined Ravelry (www.ravelry.com), a knitting site, to help me keep track of what I've made. Apparently they like published patterns, so I'm publishing one here:

Jenny's belt

Cast on 5 stitches of DK yarn on 7mm needles, or other large needles.
Garter stitch
Keep going until it's long enough to go round your waist.

Physics funding cuts

cesy — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:20:27 GMT

See www.saveastronomy.org.uk for details about the £60 million cut to physics funding the UK Government have made.

I used WriteToThem to send a message to my MP about it. Anne Milton sent me a reply with a copy of a letter from Ian Pearson, Minister of State for Science and Innovation. He failed to address the point, and just sent me a load of blurb about how wonderful Labour are and how much they've increased the science budget. She also mentioned that another constituent, from UniS, had written to her about it.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has a response from their MP, on this or any other issue. Is there anything more I can do?

Also, what's with David Howarth only responding to 48 out of 158 emails sent to him? He seems generally good on almost everything else.

cesy — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:04:27 GMT

Link from Lis: All the Latin you'll ever need on the internets: http://ironychan.livejournal.com/1026471.html

J K Rowling interview

cesy — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:35:01 GMT

There was a J K Rowling interview on TV over the Christmas holidays, and I scribbled down a couple of things which are mainly notes for me but I thought some of you might be interested to know.

Harry's children's full names: James Sirius, Albus Severus and Lily Luna.
Luna married Rolf Scamander and had twin boys, Lorcan and Lysander.
George married Angelina and had two children, Fred and Roxanne.
Percy married a girl called Audrey.